How users and recruiting editors approach your web site

How we approach and seek to understand websites has much in common with deciphering many artifacts or art forms. We approach with a level of expectation, and thus we have readily preconceived ideas.

theimpressionist.co.uk

For instance, if you expect to see a website, such as these student websites from our Masters program and you see an advertisement, you immediately switch off and leave the page. Your expectations have not been fulfilled.

So for most users it's the form and what scholars like David Bordwell refer to as "style" - an intrinsic quality - which interchanges with form that attracts you.

Form is dependent on style as much a style defines form. Nike's tick is its form, and also its acquired style. The iPad is a great example of form and style merging.

A Western film's style defines its form; it's genre. The BBC's relatively new website is a new style that defines the form of websites cohering to the iPad screen.

And style can also be shaped by the content. Take a fashion website, it's defined by its photos; the photos (the content) make up the style.

Similarly, with reference to form, if your website doesn't cover the whole screen then invariably people make a judgement.

In the 1990s, websites were 800 pixels wide, because 15-inch screens were the norm, so small design websites are often associated with the 1990s, unless an inherent design concept is provided. Here style is defining the form.

This is all fine, but what does it mean?

Why Form Matters

Offbeatlondon.co.uk and WhereisLondon.co.uk - which do you prefer and why?

It means when the user comes to your website, in the short amount of time, they've made up their mind. Our user was an editor, someone you could send your link to open your site and conclude on the strength of what they see how competent, brilliant or mediocre you are. 


The form matters deeply; the shape, the size, the way you have arranged the elements, your content and how it's styled. The more harmonious the site, the more aesthetic an impact is has on the user. The form should also exude functionality. 


Good design is about solutions to a problem, such as how do I sell myself. Harmony also comes from your colour scheme, your use of negative or white space, how uncluttered the site is. 


The colour "white" is often associated with minimalism, elegance, and informational sites. The colour "black" is a reference to chic, boldness, and focusing the viewer's attention, which is why fashion magazines often used black backgrounds.


So in that first impression, that important behaviour for the next step is being considered – albeit subconsciously – that is whether the user will engage by clicking further on the site. 


They have NO notion who you are, your strengths, and in spite of your e-mail to them, or the "Hey, check out my website" at a party (a phrase to be avoided at all costs, unless you're applying to work for the Disney Chanel), they approach your website cold. 


Your site must inform the user who you are, what they see, its relevance perhaps, the experience they are likely to get on the site. Remember you're not quite the brand yet! 


To that end, if you haven't stated on your front page who you are or what your website is about, then you are denying the editor crucial information. 


So far I have talked about cognitive behaviour; any user does not need to be skilled in semiotics to read your site, but we can evoke semiotics to ascertain some of the thoughts the user is entertaining. 


What is apparent is one thing, what isn't is that a user constructs, which on occasion I have referred to in lectures as "connotation", using your data to build up secondary and tertiary meanings. 


They do this where you are ambiguous and from the manner in which you have used elements. That's why it's important, as we have discussed in lectures to search out exemplars, how gifted individuals have designed. 

Why Annotation Matters 

theskintflint.co.uk

Everything, all assets, need annotation. If you have pictures on your site and there is no indication what the picture is, what its context is, what it means, then you might as well be showing the editor your family album. 


In fact, I know many senior editors who will reject the picture or video if there is no information attached. Firstly, it's not journalism, which is about information; secondly the presumption is someone else could have taken this. 


And the minute they are met with these inadequacies, their expectations dip. Mostly anyone today can take a picture, but not many people know how to annotate and edit, which you should as a journalist, and we've mentioned this. 


If they have clicked a link, and it is text-based, then all our research tells us people engage more with the site when it's made out according to the rules of Jacob Nielsen. 


Aesthetically, the text easier to read, easy to digestive, and is the contents is strong will make that impression. 


You cannot afford to follow Jacob Nielsen. rules, in articles, and ditch them elsewhere. If the user gets through the experience of your first link, and that first link is often the link on your navigation bar, then they may click elsewhere. 


It's important then that you have a consistent navigation bar and that you're aware of your information architecture hierarchy. 


It's the link next to "Home" that may often get the first click, unless you've designed the site otherwise. After one or two clicks of your content, the editor may well then navigate to your "about me". 


Your "about me", is a professional bio, which can show some personality, but must be restrained from being flippant. The "about me" is the clincher if they like what they see. 


An action picture, or profile picture showing detail of you work in all its reflective mode has a far greater impact than the one of you at that party. 


Again, here style, form, content work in the same way as first impressions. Have you made it obvious how to contact you? Is it a link, or a complex e-mail they need to copy and paste? 


The easier it is, the more likely someone will follow through. 


Two additional pieces of info here from two incredible experts. Brian Storm of Mediastorm says the "About me" is the place he goes very quickly on his click through journey of  website, while Ilicco Elias says the most important link is your journalism piece that's been google and indexed.


To that I add, either route, context matters. If you're linking from a report, the piece as much as what it represents and how you went about it provides much needed information. Your piece may never be read, but if you can tell the editor how long it took you, why it matters, the style you conceived - as added info, you'll win brownie points.


Show off your skills 

LondonDiversity.co.uk

Editors today may see many websites. On average building a complex personal site may not take you more than a week, also it's common knowledge that many website owners choose a template. 


So, is there any indication that you created and built this site, or what your competency skills are in CSS/HTML, design or that you designed the site and others following industry-standard. If your work doesn't say these things, an editor won't assume that you undertook all this work. 


Design is about cognitive functionality. Your website must refrain from any assumption that you will have, and which assumes others looking at your content will necessarily understand. 


Non-online journalists can afford to think this way because they're not burgeoning designers. Online journalists can't. Information architecture is about leading people on an experience, sure that you'll get your message across as unequivocally as possible. 


What you don't say will often not be understood. If you manage to send off your user to your blog, note that if the last time you updated your blog was a month ago and then it doesn't bode well for you. 


Also, if they're going to read one post from you, would you not prefer it was one of your strongest pieces. Therefore, provide this as the link from your website and not the generic link to your blog. 


Now, back to style again. Style works on a number of levels, and one of those is about how contemporary your site is. 


No website can afford not to engage in a social network proscenium giving the user the ability to add content via comments, or played with the site. 


This can be done in a number of ways, what it refers to do something called the wow factor. It's that sensibility when you see something you simply say "wow". 


It's what all creatives/scientists aspire to. If you can give the user a bit more, they'll remember you.

These are some of the behavioural patterns that users/editors use to navigate and make meaning out of your website and consequently you. And, that's the approach we adopted to deconstructing your site.


David Dunkley Gyimah is a Senior Lecturer in online and film, videojournalism, and a PhD Researcher using cognitive and literary critique, semiotics, Heidegger's phenomenology and Mass Communication to explicate meaning within websites and film. You can see his work here or contact him here on viewmagazine.tv/training/index.html

The art of knowing - Problem solving in Post new media

Problem solving in new post new media is more about experimental problem solving that at any time.

I once posed a delectable exercise for a student of mine.

I gave her this Rubik cube and asked her to solve it. She did in around a minute and a half. Not bad!

I then gave her a second cube below and told her this was in its correct state,  but how did I get there?

Presumably the way she did it, she replied but she looked confused. I don't understand the question, she replied.

I reiterated. I bought this one below in a shop, but don't want to undo it for fear I may not be able to put it together, but how did the manufacture, the machine get it into this state of correctness. I mean it had to be a machine as you couldn't employ someone to fix them all like you did? Can you?

I don't know, she replied

The lesson highlighted a number of things. The first is learning by doing. Her attempt to align the cube yielded a methodology. If she were to do it again, she'd have had to rethink the procedure, but an underlying methodology exist in keep trying and not giving up, because it's solvable.

The second attempt seems baffling because she has no knowledge of how the company did it, and she's probably smirking inside at my feeble excuse that I don't want to do it because I'm not sure I can put it together again.

I often come across students in the second example, who either want the results as they should be or a list. Their position is to not unconstruct the form for fear they can't put it together, not realising even when you make it obvious that that's my role as educator.

Has it got something to do with the way we're taught as undergrads?

In other words I won't give you the answer, you must find it as the first example showed, but I firmly believe in the philosophy of providing the 'safe' environment to explore.  By searching, getting it wrong, experimenting to get it right, we build up methodologies.

Maths students executing differentiation using first principles know these as showing the logical steps at how you reached a given solution.

The use of direct knowledge e.g dates, exact times, what makes a good film, are desirable, even for some areas necessary, but in the field of the creative arts, nothing is sacred, even the so called rules we've come to worship e.g. as rule of thirds.

The question is why rule of thirds works, not that it blithely does.  All knowledge is susceptible to change, which is the job of practitioners and higher learning challenging forms.  Some things work because of reworked schemas that have become conventions.

For instance, when shooting, we're told, don't shoot into light as you get a silhouette, yet that very shot could win you photographer of the year with its abundance in chiaroscuro.

Ideas supposedly fixed, require more interrogation now than we credit them. After all having we gone past media and even new media?

DSLR 5D film - All things being equal how do add quality?

Critical tonal listening

Why when you whisper on the phone from a meeting will the person on the other end often whisper back? 


It all matters, more so now giving that all things are equalising. 

When the pictures no longer differentiate the quality of the practitioner because the camera  e.g. DSLR creates the illusion of professionalism, some other variables gets called into question.

I say creates the illusion, but on the other hand there are the professionals - but how from looking at the story do you delineate the two?

I wager this will all come to a head quite soon, because at some point you can't practicably or philosophically better the picture, unless you go hyper-reality e.g 3D which was cinema's smack down to television after they went HD.

David Dunkley Gyimah editing at BBC Radio by splicing up tape (editing) on a reel to reel 

So you revert to the talent. And a key index, often overlooked is sound. Not actuality in the sense of capturing sound using a good microphone but an audioscopic sensation in the narrative.

What your subject says is important, but how they say it is doubly so. This is a sensory operation or equally so a Theatre/film director's prerogative. If you've worked in radio, you'll also recognise this.

I can illustrate this to some degree with this video below from three versions of Richard III. Listen to them and ask which one you would prefer and then imagine you'd ask your interviewee and they'd replied with the first one. Would that have done you?

If you didn't like their response how do you get your interviewee to respond like Slinger, and finally McKellen?



As a videojournalist and Artist in Residence at the Southbank I have developed techniques from my many years as BBC Radio reporter and presenter to get the most out of my interviewees.

My producer at BBC Radio 4 in the early to mid 1990s, Joy Hatwood winner of many Sony Awards, was instrumental in bringing about an understanding of critically tonal narrative.

There were times on listen-back when she'd shake her head; you haven't got it. What she meant was they've said it, but there's nothing there. Equally if you do voice over for a living, your own narrative tones and inflexions are key to portraying meaning.

Septics could dismiss it as manipulative, but far from it, it falls in the ambit of film Scholar Bordwell's Making Meaning.

A large percentage of the times your interviewee will mirror you, so your approach to the story is critical. Good psychologists/ detective use this to get their subjects to feel what they're thinking by shaping?

That's not to say if you're in a happy mood critical interviewing will turn you into a quivering wreck, but that in principle by setting the stage and understanding the story and empathising with your interviewee they'll speak to you as they would in Soliloquy form and not as interviewer.

I leave you with this, John Hegley reciting Tarantella.



1. We had to find the right venue. John wanted to include the library, but we agreed to do it all there.

2. The library was in fact closed, so he started using his normal talking voice, but then I asked if he could go softer.

3. At some point off camera he asks if he's too soft. I reply no, knowing the setting, the tone is exactly what we need for making meaning of the text.

If you're in London during the summer I'll expand on this on one of my Master Classes. For more see viewmagazine.tv 

DSLR Cinema videojournalism - a personal view from research study

Presenting at the University of Reading last Tuesday gave me the opportunity to précis a four year PhD study in videojournalism across a filmic expanse culminating in DSLR videojournalism.

It was followed up yesterday with a great meeting at the Southbank Centre where I'm looking to get creative with one of the most exciting movements in modern times - Simon Bolivar Orchestra

In itself there's much to talk about, but my thesis slants towards a lived experience (phenomenology), which enriches the research data. I have been a dedicated videojournalist since 1994 - one of the first official ones in the UK, but have worked in the media, starting with the BBC in 1987.

Below I give a visual history of my work and some of my thoughts -some of which I shared last week.

Undoubtedly DSLR opens an interesting chapter for videojournalism and film making. It is both seductive and functional. Here I'm in Tahir Square shooting an elliptical piece on Egypt's uprising. The trailer's showing on viewmagazine.tv at present

The shoot suited the style of camera and look, which is ultimately the point. Art philosopher Gombrich's well known dictum of "schema plus variation" posits we are always set to improve upon what we do, yet the choices we make are as stylistic as they are functional.

The DSLR was the appropriate choice; just as an artist might choose different paints, easels and strokes to express themselves.

Below's film was with Heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis in the period he was gearing up for his unifying fight with Mike Tyson in 2002. I was one of only two film makers allowed into his camp for two weeks and in this case the only film maker allowed into the ring.

The DSLR lens' clarity might have been welcome, but I could still achieve a shallow depth-of-field with a BVW camera. I did however double up with a VX1000 which drew quite a lot of mirth during the press conference.

I shared this shoot giving one of my talks at Apple Store. What has been a requisite in all story formulation has been news training which provides the ability to think fast and often shoot a piece with no fat. 

This isn't a given in news production. For instance at Channel One TV we the videojournalists couldn't afford the time for twenty questions, like the network journalists, so four five questions in we made a decision and would end the interview, often telling the interviewee what quote we would use.

On more exploratory shoots, what might be termed documentary, though this term is loosely used as well as there are several genres of documentary, we would go 'fishing', looking for meaning.

DSLR Cinema Breakout

Yesterday I had the good pleasure of speaking to Dr Kurt Lancaster behind one of the unique books on the market DSLR Cinema. He gave his insight into the shaping of DSLR form and we shared some parallel thoughts. He alerted me to this link Dan Chung's disco where professionals were expressing this general theme.

This methodology of cognitive shooting in my case comes from a combination of working at Channel One TV - the UK's first and only dedicated videojournalism station, where myself and 29 others often shot 3, sometimes 4 pieces a day, written and voiced. 

And, working at the likes of WTN which would become APTV. At the point that you're watching four monitors of feeds and three clients are on the phone to you requesting dope sheets (notes and shot list) and footage, if you can't turn around fast copy....

So the skill is to "kill what you can eat". If your piece is three minutes, then you shouldn't be shooting for a documentary. A test we did in Norway showed how to shoot a three minute filmed interview and then edited and load in 9 minutes. Furthermore, I carry out a test on clients that tests their confidence in what they observe and what should be on tape. 

Novice videojournalists start from shooting around 20 minutes for a three minute shoot to 12 minutes in the next.

Meeting one of the greats in Cinema Albert Maysles was one of the rare moments, but I also had my Schneider super 8mm camera with me. The look regarding this doyen of film making is exactly what I needed. Super 16mm with a bolex would have been even more preferable.

 At Channel One, news presenting was one of the skills we were opened up to, which concentrated the mind. A previous job in radio presenting on the London station GLR slotted in between Vanessa Feltz and Chris Evans, and at BBC Radio Leicester in the 1980s meant the ability to synthesis ideas and rework them became habitual.

When we talk about videojournalism we often negate its cognate fields e.g. radio, writing, presenting - but these are important assets in your arsenal that gives you choice. I have preserved some of my favourite interviews which include the late Eartha Kitt, Mario and Marvin Van Peebles, and James Brown's saxophonist Maceo Parker.

The combination of VJ shoot and Radio was highly beneficial when producing for both TV and Radio. In this piece here diving with Turkish and British Navy to find a wreck in Gallipoli, I could sell the radio to the BBC World World Service.


This is one of my favourite cameras and probably expensive, the Digibeta 900. At the time it costs, with lens, about $50,000.

I used it on a number of videojournalism stories for Channel 4 News, particularly in South Africa 1999 on a follow up story called the Successor Generation.

The three photos show off that workhorse of a camera - the VX1000. In the mid 90s this was the camera of choice, and the image below is of the first generation of Macs for editing.  I actually took a flight to the US for 300UKP return to buy it which was still cheaper than buying it in the UK.

One of the most memorable pieces was the runners-up piece for Channel 4's competition Unleash the Talent - a multimedia piece which still stands the test of time. See what yout think?

A measure of how good the VX1000 was comes from this shoot below. We're returning from a Nato War Games exercise in HRH's private plane. The cutlery is silver and the royal crest is everywhere to be seen.

During the exercise all the cameras we had were ruined because of the high salt content of the environment. The VX1000 though did not buckle.

On our way back at 40,000 feet we were tagged by this Tornado to escort us part of the way, or shoot us down, if we ignored their call sign.

At one point we were so close to each other I could clearly see the face of the copilot. He obviously saw me too as in  the footage I have of this event, he quickly closes his visor.

So we end with Soweto, 1995. I had lived and worked in South Africa as a freelance foreign correspondent working for about four outlets: BBC, ABC News, SABC and a couple of magazines - entrepreneurial journalism 1992.

I have worked with several cameras and I presently have four including the DSLR, but it really is horses for courses. My PhD thesis reveals a more fundamental issue which has to do with the interpretation of reality and how it's codified through the image.

The cinematic has the ability to innervate the image and suspend judgement, but that's a more philosophical post for later.

The upshot is how you extract meaning from the story and how you perceive an intended audience will do so without taking the eye of the prize - that takes experience. As my next post will argue when technology is levelled, and there are no advantage to be accrued from aesthetic excesses, you go back to the fundamental cognitive element, the story.

And this intangible - the story hides a number of cues that require excavation, that won't always work.

Dr Lancaster's book on DSLR Cinema places Hollywood's ability towards the motor sensory experience of film in the hands of a new generation of film makers such as Eliot Rausch - who spoke to us a couple of weeks ago - and some old hands pushing the form such as Shane Hulburt.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster in online journalism, and multimedia projects. He runs a module in Television, Docs and Videojournalism and is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre. His PhD is a phenomenology of news making. 

Starting an online TV or media venture- let me help you

Panelist, and photographer David Dunkley Gyimah at Sheffield Docs with Danfung Dennis exhibiting his new IPad App for immersive visual viewing.

You're keen to start that online future TV idea - mixing the net and something along the lines of television, which I spoke privately to delegates about at this year's superb Newsrewired event. 

Your ambition is about to bear fruit. The figures have been crunched. You probably already have an income stream from another side of your business and are looking to diversify.

You've lined up advertising, otherwise are certain to guarantee up 1st, 2nd even 3rd quarter funding.

The gap in the market looks even more attractive, now it's time to get this new media venture up and running.

Wait!

There's a strong chance your model apes current offline television offerings. If it does it's the wrong approach. You might have launched a successful show on television, but then you had a sizable budget, had focus groups involved or truthfully you're a dab hand at television.

Online is a different matter. The mantra should be "Stop trying to copy television, and invent a new vision".

Despite it's low entry point programming still costs, so having an infra structure like a Telcom helps, otherwise, it's a slow steady ascent into the programming game.

Changing the Social Network Game
In 1999 I was filming one of Johannesburg's most savvy media practitioners, editor of a hip magazine called Y, for the UK's Channel 4 News.

Ithumelang said something profound about South Africa's 94 transition. There's been an economical transformation, but not a social one.  You could say the same thing for the media industry at large.

Money sees us mimic successful models to replicate online and thus far the social changes in media has been co-opted to suit television's model and also been compartmentalised into something called Social Media.

You need a Social Media unit now before you're worth your salt. That's Ford's 1920s division of labour at work again. It's so rubbish. You don't need a unit, you have to be. Any freelancer making a living will tell you of the need to socially network way before FB and Tweeter existed.

We share because we want to, and these apps have been a real send to the entrepreneur. There are heuristic and experiential strategies to facilitate our growth,  but we need to share something of value first.

You need content before you share and this is where we tend to fall.

Pearson Publishing Training
Last Monday I spoke to a nice group of executives from Pearson publishing about the underlying trend in video production and videojournalism, website interfacing and how with good content you can activate strong SEO articles.

The case studies I gave come from my own lectures, one put into practise by a student of mine and the other my piece on Kony2012.

The video you'll probably know is a phenomenal success. My analysis of Kony2012 is worth a sneak as it alludes to their strategic use of symbolic and implicit codes. This page shot of google when I imput "kony2012", shows where the article appears on the front page of some 40 million ranks.

Google page on imputing "kony2012"

Viewmag.blogspots blog, 2 postings, come in on the front page

Time of googling was 1.58 on Wednesday 18th April.

In google's rankings at the time of writing, 1.58  it ranked on the first page.


Television was once a breakthrough
However this is not the point of this post. Media historians and enthusiasts will likely tell you how badly television is made - not as individual programmes where there have been huge successes, but that television was a poor cousin of its main visual media competition cinema.

And if there's one thing cinema could not compete with Television it was Liveness - the ability to go live and offer immediate gratification.  Television largely suffered against cinema for spectacle but when it mimicked live it was untouchable.

Look at American Idol, the best drama series like ER, and The Apprentice - they're cinematic spectacles and in mentalitie'. In Idol and the Apprentice - they also push the notion of happening live - even when they're pre-recorded.

That twin combination has been at the mainstay of  French philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, and this Thursday, tomorrow, I'll be speaking at JAM about how such strong ideas relate to our vision pleasure in the digital age.

In the past I have shared similar ideas with networks in Beirut, Egypt - where I am due to return - the US, South Africa and in the UK with newspapers. 8 Days was the documentary I made about the newspapers training programme, effectively a digital ethnographic study.

Experiential learning is a powerful teacher; I know enough from working within the BBC, Channel 4 News and a stint at ABC News to understand the semiotics of programme making, but as Deleuze stresses practical put-in-place philosophy enables the user to break down problems and reconstruct them seeking out answers to basic, fundamental questions often missed in contemporary society.

We want to copy television because it offers solutions; indeed it has excelled by relearning from itself, but its original premise only 60 years ago was a poor one; poor in the sense it didn't have the funds to do what the best of cinema could do.

Now you can. If you want to invent the future, it means educating the audience; it'll be slow at first, but in the long run you'll inherit a lasting legacy. There have been a number of case studies I have investigated that could have done that, but they lost their way.

The door in now wide open.

David Dunkley Gyimah is competing his PhD in the moving image. He's a senior lecturer and trainer with a background in broadcasting from 1987. He's been on the Net since 1995 and builds sites and creates factual and news products. You can read more about the future of programmes from the US Award winning site he built Viewmagazine.tv 

Interrogating the media for the nest best thing

Now can you read this. Joe Dubois' daughter passed with flying colours. But something was still wrong. His daughter continued squinting at home when reading, so he brought her back to the doctor, who was not assumed having already diagnosed her as having 2020 vision.

This time Joe had the doctor turn away and observe as her dad asked her to identify letters on the chart. She squinted, couldn't and the Doctor was fascinated.

Somehow he was transferring to the little girl what he wanted her to tell him, because seemingly she'd memorised the grid.

This scene comes from the US series Medium starring Patricia Arquette as  detective Allsion DuBois who sees the future etc, but it's poignancy is vast.

You're often hear the following:

Video on the web should be below 2 minutes, and people don't read online, they skim. Ask yourself how you know this.

Because someone knowledgeable told you, and sometimes depending on your speaker, he or she found out in that great repository of knowledge - the web.

But here's the crunch. The web, indeed even research can tell you anything you want to hear. Let's leave research out for the moment.

The web says so, with a link to some firm or company, with no methodology of how they know - is one of the enduring myths of erroneous information on the web.

So how do you know videos should be so long? Because teenagers are telling you so. Well teenagers say a lot of things, as do non-teenagers, so the next best thing you need to do is undertake an empirical study. That means test the hypothesis you have.

Now depending on your questions you can also influence the answers. A subtle shift is giving times in ascending order 2 minutes, 4 minutes etc. Also if you're in a hurry to finish a survey how does your own time needs influence the outcome.

Research needn't be boring. Here goes. Firstly you can trend extrapolate - examining past trends. Why do we like short videos? Well if we look hard enough we'll find there's a trend in diminishing length.

But why does it apply to the web? Here you could examine features and lifestyles associated with the web - lean forward, you watching at work when you shouldn't, the brightness of the screens that makes you tired and so on.

Then you test those.

One of the things as a videojournalist/film maker I like doing is using film to examine live-studies. It's a practise that has a long lineage in ethnographic films, but given our level of Social Network activity has renewed purpose.

And from what I would call these films of inside records, we can begin to understand not just by hyperbole or more pointedly interviews, but also letting the camera observe in an impressionistic way - that's small details.

Details about what we do and how will come fast and furious at us, and even though the web is a gem, it doesn't have all the answers. Rigour and knowing how to devise and extract data will undoubtedly become a bigger industry than it has so far.

Because rightly we really truly want to know what's going on and that often emerges from deeper analysis than ..because she told me.

Codes, subjects and that thing videojournalism

It was not us the viewer that designed exclusively the world as it should look on a TV screen, nor was it the artist. The artist painted, sculptured, wrote and we the audience negotiated with the form.  What we liked, we pursued, when we didn't the artist retreated into oblivion.

It was the executive whose own preferences dominated by a perception of the medium's codes and cloaked behind the muses of the audience curtailed what could be.

In penning his masterpieces, Daniel Defoe 300 years ago drew the ire of critics because his serialisation of short stories would corrupt the form of exquisite writing.

In painting, Claude Monet was rounded upon by important figures just over a 100 years ago because he couldn't paint. Indeed his unfinished art works were sketches, or impressions. The name would stick and soon audiences flocked.

Robert Drew the pioneer behind Cinéma vérité was criticised for wanting to film in a completely new way. "The television news didn't understand", he told me. "I'd show them some pictures and they'd say you've got some fine pictures there Bob"... and left it at that.

Similar stories of excellence can be traced from any of the creative arts and the theme here is in its beauty often quite simple. The artist creates for themselves with one eye perhaps on friends, but it is their individualism we buy into.

Theirs is to perfect their form in a manner in which philosopher Schopenhauer would comment, the author must has something to say. The true author is haunted to express and what she or he produces will not always be immediately, if ever, understood.

We're perpetually moving, so this is not a critique of the continuing fault lines in videojournalism and the rest. The wisdom of crowds contributes heartily itself to development. However there is a fundamental caveat.

Writing, as I'm doing now, does not create the form. Granted it has other values. Doing it does. And the businesses may initially fail to understand, because if its new and exciting it will challenge existing codes of cause - new style - and effect - what's the return.

But make no mistake, codes and the myths of ideas that work on a grand scale (ideology) continue to mind-numbingly shape what we do, and create conventional meaning. The artist does not always respect that.

The danger we entertain is critiquing forms, not as logical rhetoricians - another blog in itself - but in not doing and understanding the matrix of codes that dominate our lives and that the art of new takes time, otherwise we risk cloning circular ideas.

The breakthrough in creativity in a new filmic discourses is not to be prescriptive, but flexi.

The window lay in businesses, telecoms, creative Net sites supporting both intellectually and with resources the ideas of artists who are busily. by default, reshaping the way we see the world.

And guess what it's beautiful, when you see it!

Prospective job hunters and entrepreneurial multi skillers use websites

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Alice Lee has achieved that elusive of Warholism, even if she has yet to hear back from Instagram about that job.

A couple of weeks ago, this enterprising student set bloggers et al talking with a website: dear instagram aimed at Instagram prospecting for a job. Instagram is a photo sharing site/app with an assortment of filters to transform your pictures.

With swirling typefaces and a GSOH, bordering at times on youth exuberance; she says she skipped classes to create the site, Lee pitched her tent site.

Clever? That's the debate amongst interested parties and educationists, as the question gets asked, will this be the way we apply for jobs in the future? Is the CV dead?

Lee, if anything showed some enterprising spirit and previous jobs at Foursquare demonstrate her tenacity.  Then there's  Neta Marshall who also wants to work at Instagram, but by comparative analysis has set herself a tall order with lee

Finding that job
As part of our Masters Online module, we press are journalists-to-be to use cognitive and semiotic skills to appeal to potential employers, not through bespoke sites, but tailored to their overall strengths and what their choice employer would be looking for.

Take a look for yourself at the about us pages of

• Sense of London
• Colour my London

which links to individual sites and play juror, before we assess their work in the coming week or so.
Some of the characteristics you might consider are cleanness of the site, its simplicity, weight and zen quality. That is when you cohere all the qualities you get the whole. Consider the parameters below:

• Aesthetics and style
• Clear communication of design
• Content, its quality and layout
• Navigation
• Miscellaneous innovations

It stands to reason, if you are wanting to work for an online site, it's appropriate you demonstrate this within your limited window off opportunity. And there's experiential evidence that shows this works, at least my end.

Entrepreneurial skills
Stuart Cosgrove, a well known figure in the UK's television industry - a senior executive at Channel 4- once said CVs were difficult to believe because a candidate's history could not be verified.

It gave me an idea, in 1997 looking for my next job, I devised what I called a Visual CV. Whilst working in South Africa, I had interviewed Nelson Mandela at a press conferences, but who would believe me, so the CV contained a column with icons illustrating just that.

It worked, as I would later get a call from the then deputy editor of Channel 4 News Peter Barron, now a senior google exec, to come and see him. I would become a regular freelance at Channel 4 News for about four years.

This shot of me much interviewing the former head of the CIA James Woolsey illustrated, without hearing the interview, that I had an interest in international affairs and I could interview leading news people.

Now as the next generation job-hunt, the market perceptively looks more difficult. Employers have become more discerning and their job at picking a candidate as a BBC editor told me, more difficult.

For every job, they'll be a hundred applicants and out of them at least five could do the job admirably; I call it the 5 percent rule.

So anything you can do to demonstrate key skills is paramount. And in the expression of wanting that job, it's not enough to say you're multi-skilled as mostly everyone is, the key is whether you understand the medium and the production and affective state of content.

You've got a limited amount of time to strike. What are you going to do. The next step is yours?

David Dunkley Gyimah is a senior lecturer and Phd researcher in online site building using css, flash, etc, combining cognitivism and semiotics, with videojournalism and docs at Viewmagazine.tv

How to get good grades in your exams

Thought this might interest those submitting for your second semester modules since it's a universal theme.

1. Read the fine print of what's required and talk to colleagues. If an essay says 1500 words and you create 2500 that may be viewed as not disciplined and may lose you marks.

2. Wow yourself and others.  Surprise yourself by creating something exceptional, but don't be blinded by your own invention. Seek advice, the wisdom of crowd from others. If the work you've produced was too easy, then look at it again.

3. Hand in your work on time and check and double check before submission.

4. Use your work, particularly if you're publishing online to impress future employers. And if that is the case ensure there's a strong sense of denotation as to whom that employer might be. If it's a website, who are you and is it obvious what your strengths are so anyone might guess a probable employer. Makes recommendation easier as well.

5. Enjoy the process. This is the last time you'll probably undertake such voluminous work, before your  career. Critique in the literary objective sense, rather than the rhetorical yellow journalism method.

6. Reflect on what you've done and write it up whether you've been asked to or not. Reflective writing is the art of philosophical musings, where you the "self" asserts qualities discovered and refined along the way. It is storytelling par excellence of the autobiographical kind.

7. Look to  industry standard rather than the academic ceiling. If it's the academic ceiling you're aiming for, you could do brilliantly but that might not make you industry-ready. Of course that all depends on how practically and theoretically-orientated your course is to industry.

8. Ask when you're unsure and have consulted with friends, rather than sending 80 emails to your Professors and lecturers, as at this time of the year she will be inundated with emails. The more organised lecturers would have tried to supply as much info on modules course site or blackboard.

Obviously there are occasions when you'll be unsure and need to ask your lecturer will be paramount.

9. Remember profs and lecturers have two personalities, the lecturer and the marker. Sometimes they meld, often they don't. So don't be ambiguous. Remember the art of storytelling and examples given when storytelling. Lecture's are readers too. Their job is to help you along, so the marking regime is based on parameters that meet those requirements.

10. Get yourself a drink and talk with friends and lecturing team about the term and what may lay in store in the future. The lecture room is just the tip of the iceberg for the career ahead, and keep in contact.

The industry is pretty small and you never know when you'll walk into that job and find the lecturer you left years ago sitting, waiting for the morning meeting.  One of our lecturing team did this last year moving over to CNN.

How to get good grades in your exams

Thought this might interest those submitting for your second semester modules since it's a universal theme.

1. Read the fine print of what's required and talk to colleagues. If an essay says 1500 words and you create 2000 that may be viewed as not disciplined and may lose you marks.

2. Wow yourself and others.  Surprise yourself by creating something exceptional, but don't be blinded by your own invention. Seek advice, the wisdom of crowd from others. If the work you've produced was too easy, then look at it again.

3. Hand in your work on time and check and double check before submission.

4. Use your work, particularly if you're publishing online, to impress future employers. And if that is the case ensure there's a strong sense of denotation in answering the fundamental questions of your intended employer. If it's a website, who are you and is it obvious what your strengths to a third party.

5. Enjoy the process. This is the last time you'll probably undertake such voluminous work, before your 
career. Critique in the literary objective sense, rather than the rhetorical yellow journalism method.

6. Reflect on what you've done and write it up whether you've been asked to or not. Reflective writing is the art of philosophical musings, where you the self asserts qualities discovered and refined along the way. It is storytelling par excellence of the autobiographical kind

7. Look to  industry standard rather than the academic ceiling. If its the academic ceiling you're aiming for, you could do brilliantly but that might not make you industry-ready. Of course that all depends on how practically and theoretically-orientated your course is to industry.

8. Ask when you're unsure and have consulted with friends, rather than sending 80 emails to your Professors and lecturers, as at this time of the year she will be inundated with emails.

The more organised lecturers would have tried to supply as much info on modules courses or blackboard, but obviously there are occasions when you'll be unsure  and need to ask staff.

9. Remember profs and lecturers have two personalities, the lecturer and the marker. Sometimes they meld, often they don't. So strip away the personality of your lecturer in submitting work. Tell a story with appropriate examples rather than a litany of facts. The art of the narrative is about engagement and the more enjoyable the read, the more you stand to gain.

10. Get yourself a drink and talk with friends and lecturing team about the term and what may lay in store. the lecture room is just the tip of the iceberg for the career ahead and keep in contact. The industry is pretty small and you never know when you'll walk into that job and find the lecturer you left years ago sitting, waiting for the morning meeting.  One of our lecturing team did this last year moving over to CNN.